I wrote this on 9/11/01
AWAKENING
Inshallah
As Thou wills it
We awake from the dream
and rest at the edge of the candle's flame,
on the border between light and dark.
Our world grows dark and fetid,
composting around us --
what garden will we plant
in this rich soil?
How will this heart-wound heal --
Into the jagged shards of hatred,
or open and hot with love,
like the burning sun?
Lovers and haters
murderers and saints,
all suffer the same broken heart.
This heart-wound is a window on the divine.
Will you look through it?
What do you choose to see?
Divine ones,
heal the dead, purify their hearts
and show them the way to return
to the sacred source.
Divine ones,
heal the living, purify our hearts
and help us to live a life
of love and light.
Thank you for the
awesome magnitude of this lesson
and for the brilliance of the teaching
that will come from it.
Inshallah
As Thou wills it
posted by HeartFire at 2:19 PM
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This one I wrote for a ceremony at a weekend-long outdoor sacred rave celebration in the summer of 2001
A Blessing
I call in the spirits of below,
Grandmother earth,
foundation of the world,
the base of the pyramid.
granite, stone, magma, oil, blood of the Grandmother,
I call you up from the heart of the earth,
up into us, up into our own hearts,
to the altar at the center of creation
Grandfather sky, I call you down
from the black void between the stars
from the constellations,
pinpricks in the veil across infinity
come down to us,
send down your divine presence
down through our bodies
to make love with Grandmother earth
in our hearts,
the center of our being
and there awaken the presence of the source
I call forth the center into this sacred space
I call you out from within, and in from without
come and be present with us
fill this space with your presence
be call you to be with us
Allah hu
I call in the spirits of the east,
spirits of sunrise and beginnings,
new life
infancy
the first crack of light
dawning illumination
spirits of fire and motion
Hear my voice!
come into this space
come and be with us.
stand in the eastern gateway
keep out all that is bad.
and let in all that is good
I call in the spirits of the south,
spirits of heart, love,
family, connection, childhood
the rich red blood
and the watery realm of spirit
I call you in to help us
Hear my voice!
come and be with us and help us
stand in the southern gateway
and keep out all that is bad
and let in all that is good
I call in the spirits of the west,
spirits of change and transformation,
spirits of death and disease
of duty and adulthood
and all those things that make us change
when we should but won't
Hear my voice!
come and be with us now
come and stand in the western gateway
and keep out all that is bad
and let in all that is good.
I call in the spirits of the North
spirits of wisdom, old age,
of knowledge gained,
bleached bones in the desert,
ancient ancestors, come and be with us.
Spirits of the North,
Hear my voice!
come and be with us now.
come and stand in the northern gateway
and keep out all that is bad
and let in all that is good
I call in the sacred ancestors to come and help us
grandmother and grandfather, come and be with us here
I call in the illuminated ones,
teachers and healers from all space and time,
come and be with us
I call in the sacred dreamers,
bring us the vision we so desperately desire
Masters of power and energy,
hear my voice and answer me
Dragons of the five realms,
Lords of fire, water, earth, air and sprit,
Come now to help us in a good and beautiful way
All beings of light who wish to be here with us,
come in and help
Angels and archangels, grace us with your presence
Michael bring your sword of fire to stand guard over us
Rafael bring your healer's touch
Urael bring the wealth of the spirit
Gabrael bring the horn of the WORD
Azrael, guardian of the gate between worlds,
bring your black scythe
and set your dogs to prowl
the peremeter of this sacred space
and keep out all darkness
from our light
I ask you all to come and be with us,
and to aid in purifying this space
All you of evil intent
all you of the darkness
all you who can hear my voice and beyond
by the will of Allah,
by the power of the Christ mind
with the power of Azrael's black scythe,
You are banished from this place
BE GONE!!
Sacred ones,
divine friends
guard and nurture these sacred people
keep them safe and provided for
watch over them and guide them
help them through this transition
and make it as easy as it can be
and let us awaken,
Children in the garden of Eden
posted by HeartFire at 11:36 PM
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Sacred and Profane
To quote Rumi again --
"God is closer to you than your own juggular vein."
Something interesting I recently read goes something like this
--
"If a westerner says "I am God" they lock him up. Say that to a Hindu and he'll reply, 'Oh, so you finally understand."
In the West we tend to think that God and man (heaven and earth) are seperate, that the sacred and the profane are in opposition and cannot coexist, and therefore to reach for the divine means that we must let go of what is here. Here, infinity is on a straight line, with the infinite source and the infinite resolution outside the envelope of our manifest existance. The divine essence comes from outside, lingers here in the profane realm to cause our reality, and then passes back out again. Our symbol for this is the cross, with the upper arm reaching for heaven, the lower one entering the earth, and the horizontal branch arching across the middle realm where we live. In the center is the resolution of duality, where the heart opens to divine realization.
If you look at it with an Eastern mind, infinity is in a circle. The infinite origin and the infinite resolution are both within the envelope of our world. The divine essence constantly cycles through our reality, transforming itself as form is made and unmade. The symbol for this is the yin/yang circle, where light and dark cycle within the circle of our universe, with the dot of light in dark and the dot of dark in light showing yin and yang transforming into each other. In this system, instead of the sacred and the profane, we have Chi that cycles as it should, and Chi that becomes stagnant and refuses to move or transform when it should.
If you look at it with a henotheist/shamanic/primitive model, there is no concept of heaven or hell, nor of sacred and profane. Everything is alive and everything is filled/composed of spirit. In that view, we are not bodies with spirits, but spirits with bodies -- for a short while -- and fully invested parts of a living, sacred reality. Within that conceptual framework you can't even have a conversation about dualism, and it's difficult to describe with our language and its inherent dualism. In such a system, one is either in ballance or out of ballance with the natural laws of the cosmos, but one can never be profane.
I don't know... am I making any sense? Of course, I've hopelessly simplified this all, and I'm reaching the limits of my understanding.
For me, to recognize the divine in another is to realize that we are all sacred beings of the same essence. It is that essence revealing, discovering and joining itself that is love.
Love.
Destroyer of difference.
Revealer of Oneness.
-rumi
posted by HeartFire at 11:33 PM
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ONE FIRE -- MANY FLAMES.
I participate in a shamanic ritual community for which I have recently (summer 2002) served as fire-keeper during one of our three-day long outdoor ceremonies. The ceremony itself is similar to a sundance in structure, except that the dancing is only for a single day, and no one pierces. It was originally conceived of as a bridge dance to prepare people (many of whom were westerners with limited experience doing big ceremony) to go on to the more difficult higher-amplitude sundances.
The fire keeper's responsibility is to caretake sacred space and guard the gateway through which people and energy enters the sacred space. I and the other fire keeper worked with our medicine pipes beforehand in preparation. During that period I was introduced to the spirit of fire, and received information about the essence of fire. At one point I was inspired to write some of it down. From my notes:
--
All fire is derived from the original spark of the Big Bang. Each subsequent flame has been lit from that first flame in an unbroken lineage from the first moment in time. That original spark is eternal, never beginning and never ending; the universe began with a spark and will end with a spark in the Big Crunch, to explode and expand again in a new universe.
That first spark was transformed into star-matter, which ignited our sun as it coalesced. The energy and fire of our sun shines on the earth, and is absorbed and stored in plants as potentiated energy. We can consume those plants and release that stored energy, or we can release the energy as fire. That fire fuels our fire -- we are, in fact, on fire.
"Is fire alive?" -- no, the question is backwards. Fire *is* life. In the mitochondria of every cell burns a chemical flame that releases the original fire in the food we eat. We are on fire. We give off heat. Cut off our oxygen supply and we die in minutes. When the fire goes out, we die. The body grows cold. Fire is life.
When we reproduce, we pass that tiny flame to the next generation through a single egg and sperm. It multiplies and grows and expands into a new being, new flame, same fire.
It is that fire that anchors our spirit to our bodies and acts as the gateway that allows our spirit to manifest in the physical realm. Fire burns in the material *and* physical world. It is a beacon to spirit, just as our own flame is a beacon.
Fire is the doorway. It is the gateway through which spirit enters our lives and we communicate with spirit.
Fire passes through the spirit realm to open upon the infinite source. It releases undifferentiated energy in the spirit realm, and manifests in the material realm as heat and light. The spirit energy of fire is shaped by the intent we place in the altar, and then passes to the tree to connect with each dancer and their personal intent.
As we dance we move the energy in and out of the tree like a bellows, building up the energy in a spiral around the tree, the axis mundi connecting heaven and earth, around which the dance arbor describes the circumference of the universe. Our prayers shape our intent for the energy. The ancestors spirits dance on the other side to help us and take care of our prayers from their unique perspective. The tree is the still-point around which our dance universe spirals; it connects the energy of our microcosm to the macrocosm (with the help of the sacred beings), to send healing prayer to the universe, both for our benefit, and to the benefit of the greater world.
The children's fire burns at the heart of the universe and in our own hearts. It is the same fire that burns in the sun, the same fire that glows in the sweat stones and on the altar candle or in an incense offering. Our hearts know the divine secret because our fire is the same fire. It connect us to that same primal sense of innocence -- not ignorance -- that is the essence of childhood and still exists within each of us.
Just as we wish to protect each other's hearts and not tread on that child-like innocence and sense of Truth, we act in a respectful manner toward the fire, and we don't step between the fire and the tree.
posted by HeartFire at 11:13 PM
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What is Healing
There are two ways a broken heart can heal -- hard and sharp like glass, or open and wide like the sky. i hope mine will eventually be so open and wide that there will be no pieces left to break.
Q: I wonder if you can rebreak your heart so it heals open, like a surgeon will rebreak a bone that's healed in not the best way?
A: Yes, that's what healing is. All imballances (physical, energetic, emotional) originate in that broken heart-glass. We store those wounds in our bodies, our minds and our souls. A healing presence that can sit with the wound and listen to its story with compassionate love is all that is required to release it. You can sometimes do it yourself by learning to listening to your self from a compassionate place, or you can do it with someone else.
And all heart-wounds originate from the evidence (erroniously, always) that we are not one being, with one heart, fully and completely in love all the time with everything. The wound is healed by being the universe, fully and completely in love with the wounded self.
It is a revisiting and releasing, more than a rebreaking.
posted by HeartFire at 1:05 PM
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